MARC LEPINE: CRIMINAL OR FOLK HERO?
Most folk heroes started out as criminals, so they say. In 1989, it was clear to most people what Marc Lepine was: a criminal and a mass murderer. Twenty years later, it has changed: it is far from clear now. The simple fact that his name has not been forgotten and that his visibility, dare we say popularity, has increased, says a lot not only about the man but about the general public and its perceptions.

Monday, August 17, 2009

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IS NOT A PROBLEM

Violence Against Women Is Not the Problem, ...Violence Is

Since Marc Lepine gunned down 14 engineering students at l'École Polytechnique 20 years ago, feminists have not forgotten and launched a huge crusade against Violence Against Women since. The fact that all 14 victims were women was no coincidence. Lepine hated "feminists" and mass murder was his revenge, but more important: feminists had declared war on all men worldwide in the 1960s.

Ever since the Polytechnique incident, feminists have come together every year to commemorate this anniversary. But would it be so wrong to say that they are actually ''celebrating'' on that day. What could they be celebrating? Victory over sexism, over patriarchy, erecting a totem to the evil that is Violence Against Women and distributing white ribbons to men as a Mark of Shame. What they did with Marc Lepine was to turn a historical crime into an icon, and they used that icon as a metaphore for all society's ills. Now Lepine stands for the day-to-day sexism in our society, which is a great way to blind us to the real cause of violence (which is not only expressed with firearms, but also with road-rage, vicious words and even the still-present but mostly forgotten nuclear Armageddon threat).

Violence against women is not a problem, it is only a symptom. The statistics about "violence against women" in Canada that feminists throw at us daily state that, for instance, in 2002:

28,953 women were victims of domestic violence.

67 were murdered

514 were sexually assaulted

21,774 were assaulted.

They fail to mention that 206 women and 376 men were murdered in Canada in that same year 2002, according to

Statistics Canada. So, much more men than women are murdered every year. If being murdered is your criteria, then it is far better to be a woman than a man in this society. There should then be a blue-ribbon campaign every year to remember the men who are victims of violence in Canada, that is: if society and feminism were fair. But as we know, feminism and society are hardly fair to men in Canada.

It doesn't matter if the majority of the murderers were men. What matters is that the majority of victims are men. And who is to say that many women did not contribute to these murders of men? The point is not that most murderers are men, the point is that the women victims are only a minority. The point is: violence is a problem, but women are not the main victims. So, the white ribbon campaign is a fraud, the violence against women campaign is a fraud. Men are the real victims. The murder-rate statistic is the least amenable to manipulation by political interest groups, or people who don't trust the police. A body is a body and someone has to count it.

If violence against women was really a problem, how come so many women are seen walking the streets alone at night in big cities? They get a ride home from the subway station after 9:00 o'clock in most cities without thinking about it. Lone women are safe in our cities; they got plenty to eat, a roof over their heads, a good job and can manipulate any man they want. Don't forget: the homeless and the poor are predominantly men. Feminists fail to see that and to say it, theirs is a privileged class. But it won't last forever, and the day men will revolt: then you will see what REAL VIOLENCE looks like!

What does this mean?If more men than women are murdered every year, does it mean we live in a sexist society that discriminates against them, and that men are valued less than women? It seems so. Does it mean that we live in a hierarchical society in which men are preyed on by other men with the help of women? It pretty much looks like it. If anyone is suffering from injustice then and needs revolting, it is the men.

The problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is not that it is trying to help female victims of violence or working towards gun-control, the problem is that it offers a cartoon instead of a schematic. Most men don't rape, don't beat, and don't murder their partners; they don't get into drunken brawls and murder their neighbours at the bar every week. The White Ribbon Campaign uses the image of Marc Lepine to denounce complex social problems without addressing the real problem of violence itself. The problem isn't that some men kill women, it is that some men and women resort to killing at all. Leaving aside the minority of murderers clinically insane, what we are dealing with is a problem of violence. The White ribbon is a symbol that does more to separate us than to unite. It makes the assumption that women are not individuals, but members of an oppressed group. It fosters an us-against-them mentality that leads "both" sides to forget the real issue in favour of a group-think that men are perpetrators, women are victims. It ignores the fundamental fact that we are all individuals and that the problem is violence, not violence against women.

No comments:

Post a Comment

THEY MAY DISAPPROVE OF THIS PAGE...

SPEAKING OF VIOLENCE...

WHICH ONE ARE YOU?

Yes, which one are you? For the most part, five groups of people are interested in the Marc Lepine phenomenon: feminists, real women, bleeding heart liberals, criminalists and masculists. All are welcome here to join and post. So which one do you belong to? Maybe the above does not describe you accurately though, and you would like perhaps to add a new category to the pool. Feel free to do so, even if you should be the only one in it. It says nowhere that one cannot be his/her own planet!